Venture Capital in the Rockies kicked off with a media panel this morning, moderated by Brad Feld. The panelists were Spencer Ante of Business Week, Rebecca Buckman of Forbes, Dan Primack of peHUB Wire, and Mark Veverka of Barron’s.
We all know that the media industry is changing, but it was interesting to hear directly from some of the people locked in the battle. There was some discussion over whether or not print media was dead or not, when one panelist offered up the fact that perhaps media outlets need to be handing out Kindles. Ante offered up some wisdom that I’d generally agree with – simply that media companies in general need to “raise their game” to compete in the new online landscape.
Veverka pointed out the fact that “quality journalism is expensive” and Primack riffed off of this saying that online, “The editors are gone.” Primack had posted his “First Read” from here this morning at 8:05am, and cited the fact that “nobody else has seen it.” My editor would be flabbergasted. 😉
When asked by Feld what the most important emerging venture backed company was from their point of view, Ante offered up “Twitter” saying that “People continually underestimated it.” He’s right. They still do.
More liveblogging from VCIR to come today.
